Unveiling
by doctoruth
Summary: Brittana fic set during Halloween, circa 2x05. Oneshot written for the Brittana U Monster Fic Mash Project.


Some night, after you have kissed me for the longest time, I'm going to tell you this, and you'll feel my words all at once, as a revelation.

You taught me that word. Everyone thinks I forget what words mean or how they feel but I remember all your words for me. That's why it will be easy to give this one back to you.

You had been lying next to me in bed, running a finger down my stomach, when you told me the path that word had run along, from when it was born to the moment it was leaving your mouth and meeting my ear. You told me _revelation_ comes from _reveal_, which comes from _unveil_.

Then you lifted the thin bed-sheet up over my body and across my face, kissed me through it, and pulled it back down, saying _Like that, BrittBritt, see?_, kissing me again all close and without anything between us this time.

When I tell you this, you're going to see how I've always been yours and how you already knew that, long before you'll think you did, and how it happened despite the shifting light of everything, everything else that's only always made you more confused and only ever made me more sure.

I'm going to tell you and you'll feel the veils drop all at once, for keeps this time.

* * *

You told me you didn't know what you were going to wear for Halloween this year; I thought that meant it would be like last year, or the year before, right back to when we were 13 and you figured out how to make boys stare at you, and you'd be putting on a short dress and picking some word like _nurse_ to go with it that didn't match, not really, not with the plunge of your top or the rise of your hemline.

I almost took it back, after I saw the cloud over Kurt's face when I told him what I was going to be for Halloween. But I was excited because I felt clever, full with my joke for you. And I remembered your face the week before, when you had left my bed, and then stalked out my room with the words _I'm not_ echoing behind you, and I wanted to change that face back to the one you give me when you whisper your secret name for me.

I know you remember when you first called me _peanut_. We play the _do you remember? _game all the time, after you've touched me, and are giving me soft kisses, and I have been keeping myself still for a long time in case everything splits open, and you have to leave me. And I always ask you, _do you remember the circus?_, because then you lift the hair off my face, every time, and put your finger against the scar at my hairline. _Yes, Britt, and your dumb cousin got excited at the monkeys and threw peanut shells, and you slipped on them, and hit your head, and we had to go get your stitches_.

I love the way you tell it. You always leave out the best part, and so I say it in my head, _and then you made my favorite, peanut brittle, so I wouldn't be mad at the peanuts for hurting me and then you fed it to me and you kissed my head and said I could be your peanut, so then you wouldn't be mad at them either_. I like that you don't say that part aloud. Sometimes it's better when your words stay inside my chest, because then they meet your hand between my breasts and it's like you're holding everything they mean in there.

And I knew when you saw me tonight with red face paint everywhere and with bubble wrap pushed under my clothes to make me puffy you would get my joke for you. I knew you'd look at me and squint and then you'd see. How I am dressing as your long-ago fear that I wouldn't like peanuts anymore after I got hurt at the circus. I am dressing up as your words, as your care of my love for peanut brittle; I am joking about your name for me and I am joking about why it was your name for me.

But, Santana, I am also being the most frightening thing in the world. I am imagining your face on your bed as you were turning away from me that night, and as I got dressed tonight I was thinking: what if you were allergic to me?

* * *

Halloween is scary now, but it's not because of all the monsters, which have never scared either of us, even if we used to pretend they scared me so you could disguise kissing me with comforting me. That was only ever a disguise to you, anyway. When you comfort me with your lips it has never seemed like anything other than everything I feel; your lips are the flicker of your closed eyes and the moving light behind mine and nothing in-between.

Halloween's scary because when you dress up you sometimes get that tired look you use for boys, and something happens in the room, and it's like I'm not feeling the light right, like I'm wearing my mom's glasses, like I'm looking out through the gauze hanging over your bedroom window.

Like I'm back in your bed being kissed through a bed-sheet.

Yesterday, you were picking through your closet, throwing things onto the bed, and you asked me what scary thing I was going to be. I told you I was going to be a nut allergy, losing the _peanut_ so maybe you wouldn't get it till Halloween, and I could save the surprise. I thought it worked, too, because you kept throwing dresses on your bed, but now I don't know. Because you kissed my scar after making love to me last night, and now I am looking at you, and I think maybe you got it as soon as the words left my mouth.

* * *

You came through the front door tonight and at first I thought you weren't wearing a costume, because my eyes started from your feet upwards and you had that yellow dress on with a thick white and black striped belt, wearing the outfit you dressed in for our first high school party. Then my eyes got stuck on the yellow and black together and I thought you were being a sexy bee, or maybe a sexy bee-keeper. But then I saw the hat you'd made and it was the dorkiest thing I think I've ever seen you wearing. You had made some pointed needle out of aluminum foil that came right out the center of your head and then I remembered your dad showing us an Epipen years ago and I knew no one else would get what you were being.

But standing next to one other in our costumes we make a perfect answer. You and me, either side of the plus sign and together a whole number. Us, a complete joke, and the punchline only alive in our own eyes as we look down at the costumes.

Standing by the door you caught me, and you half-shrugged, like the smile around your eyes didn't know if it belonged on your lips, and you just hung there waiting for me, looking like the girl I knew at 10.

Everything left me in a rush. As soon as I'd moved over to you and given you the carefullest smile I could and squeezed you and held your cheek, I had to spin away from you, even though that's always the very hardest thing for me to do. I had to go, through the clot of everyone else's bodies to the back door, so I could be outside where it was clean black cold. I was breathing so hard, Santana. I was breathing harder and faster than I have ever breathed before, and every single cloud leaving me and waiting around my face was me knowing, and knowing, over and over again.

I felt it, Santana, coming right at us.

It's rushing toward you and me so fast I know I won't be able to stop it even if I wanted to. Because I was standing outside and I was seeing it. I've seen you tell me you love me, and I know it will happen too soon, and you aren't going to be ready for it. You don't see yet how strong you are.

I don't think I can be the one to show you.

* * *

It's the end of the party, now, and I'm watching you. Holding an empty cup in one hand, the other clenching in the fabric of your dress, and I recognize the face you're wearing. You're squinting down at your costume like you see it through fog, and it's the same face I saw inches from mine when you gasped into me for the first time. You're straining to hear what your body is telling you, trying to feel what this means, why you did it. I know why you answered my costume with yours.

And I know you feel it somewhere, how I'm yours. One day soon you'll say the words _I love you_, and till then I'll be holding them safe and still waiting for you. And some day after that you'll be telling me I'm yours, and I'll be telling you this story back, and all the costumes and the veils will be forever ago. I won't be waiting anymore, Santana.


End file.
